1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to genes useful for promoting plant growth, and to the novel use thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Banana (Musa spp.) is a monocotyledon crop of Musaceae, one of the important economic fruit plants, and its growing process is susceptible to physiological stress environment so as to affect its quality, and lower profit of farmer. In view of this, in order to increase the production of banana, the inventor devoted to improve the yield of banana by way of gene transfer so that the improved banana possesses better growing potential, its production period can be shortened, as well as its ability to resist stress environment can be enhanced. ATP-Binding Cassette transporter is a membrane protein commonly exists in organisms. It can hydrolyze ATP to perform active transportation of various substances through biological membrane, such as alkaloids, amino acids, heavy metal chelates, inorganic ion, lipid, peptide and sugars (Higgins, 1992; Biemans-Oldehinkel et al., 2006). Among mammal animals and microorganisms, this gene family had been studied extensively. In plants, however, it is a new research field. Animal study pointed out that ATP-Binding Cassette transporter may participate in the transportation process of drugs, where cancer cells can remove anti-cancer drug out of cell to generate drug resistance. Result in microorganism study indicated that ATP-Binding Cassette transporter was associated with the drug resistance of microorganism. While in plants, ATP-Binding Cassette transporter participated in the transportation process of many substances, and played important role in the mechanisms of growth, development, stress environment resistance and disease resistance of plants (Schulz and Kolukisaoglu, 2006). In this invention, gene transfers of banana ATP-Binding Cassette transporters MhPDR1 (Musa spp. pleiotropic drug resistance 1) and MhPDR2 (Musa spp. pleiotropic drug resistance 2) in a tobacco model plant are utilized as the material, to demonstrate that these genes possess the effect of promoting rapid growth of a plant.
In view of the importance of developing a transferring gene capable of promoting rapid growth of a plant and increasing crop production in the biotechnological industry, the inventor successfully developed genes for promoting rapid growth of plant and uses thereof according to the invention.